On September 27, 2023, Counter-Strike 2 was released, and with it, Valve rolled out a significant update that expands upon the technical test and brought an array of changes, new features, and gameplay improvements. Counter-Strike 2 is now free for everyone, likely attracting a new wave of players to the game.
The first season of Premier gameplay has also begun, offering a new competitive environment for players. Below, you can find the complete patch notes.
Counter-Strike 2 September 27 Patch Notes
Release Notes for 9/27/2023
[ COUNTER-STRIKE 2 ]
- Counter-Strike 2 is now available and free to play
- Season One of Premier has begun
[ GAMEPLAY ]
- Enabled Competitive matchmaking
- Enabled Wingman matchmaking
- Enabled Private Matchmaking
- Added Training Day, a brief introductory experience for brand new players
- Improved player-against-player movement collision
- Improved consistency of bullet penetration
- Player reflections in water are now occluded by smoke
- Molotov fire now floats above the water
- Fixed character ambient occlusion being visible through walls
- C4 bomb lights don’t reflect through walls
- Fixed some rare cases of viewmodel lighting corruption
- Adjusted smoke behavior to cover cases where smoke would stop less than a player’s height above the ground
- Fix various bugs with switching teams in the middle of offline Deathmatch
- Fixed Famas reloading too early
- Chickens can finally fall off Vertigo
[ SOUND ]
- Added the new CS2 default music kit
- Added new audio customization settings
- Various mix tweaks and adjustments
- Various bug fixes related to music kits
- Updated the game startup sound
- Added background ambience to main menu scenes
- Restored the clutch_mode_toggle function
- Fixed a bug where sometimes c4 defuse and planting sounds could not be heard in certain locations
- Fixed some surfaces being incorrectly tagged causing incorrect footstep sounds in certain locations
- Fixed a bug where attackers could not hear headshot feedback through wallbangs or smokes
- Body damage feedback for attackers will now play within the same distance as it does for onlookers through smokes and wallbangs
- Fixed a bug where scoping in affected directional sound
- First person damage sounds are now more impactful
- Removed several legacy audio convars that existed in CS:GO but never had an effect in CS2
[ ANIMATION ]
- Adjusted character additive lean animation
- Adjusted jump animation, particularly when repeatedly jumping
- Adjusted jiggle-peeking animation
- Adjusted animated character head position relative to camera position
- Added bullet belt to negev
- Reduced foot sliding when carrying slower weapons
- Fixed character momentarily standing during crouch-planting animation
- Fixed incorrect viewmodel deploy speeds
- Fixed pops in some weapon inspect animations
- Inspecting weapons may now interrupt deploy animation
[ MATCHMAKING ]
- When one or more party members get convicted of cheating and permanently banned, all their associates will be penalized with loss of Profile Rank and CS Rating
- In Premier, players with a very high established CS Rating are not allowed to party with accounts that do not have an established CS Rating
[ MAPS ]
- Various bug fixes and tweaks for all shipped maps
- Adjusted vertical audio occlusion boundaries in Nuke and Vertigo
- Added an extra bell in Inferno
- Casual and Deathmatch maps are now separated into multiple map groups
[ MISC ]
- CS:GO Players who started playing more than a week ago will receive a commemorative CS:GO coin and CS:GO Music Kit
- Added Store tab to main menu
- Enabled all interactions with inventory items
- Replaced weekly drops with a weekly Care Package. Choose from weapon cases, weapon finishes, and graffiti
- Added demo playback support
- Added the ability to favorite and shuffle loadout items
- Added new item icons
- Office and Vertigo are available as main menu scenery
- Various updates for weapon finishes, including fixing overly strong wear on several Custom Paint Job finishes
- Reworked Phoenix Street Soldier balaclava texture to resolve visibility issues
- Enabled animated eyes on agent character models
[ WORKSHOP TOOLS ]
- Game clients running in workshop tools mode are not allowed to connect to VAC secure game servers
- Added an all-new help system featuring contextually relevant guides and information. Guides include gray scale value ranges for alpha channel masking, paint-by-number mask color assignments based on current finish type, and much more!
- Removed dynamic props from solid color inspect backgrounds
